Baby Bear was very fussy over the weekend, and we chalked it up to him bonking his head on Friday.

We comforted him and gave him Tylenol.

Sunday morning, I noticed that he was drewling like a fiend and chewing on the cat.

I felt his gums, and lo and behold there was a rough spot in the front.

He’s officially toothed. Soon, he will begin chomping on his siblings and life as the animals know it will cease.

I, like most men who grew up after about 1955, have perused my share of Playboy magazines. Not so much in the past few years, mainly due to the creepy feeling I get when I realize that most of the women in recent editions are almost young enough to be my daughter.

But I do appreciate that Playboy is a provocative, entertaining, sometimes funny magazine that is enjoyed by many people around the world.

But I have to wonder exactly what was being smoked and passed around the office at the Mexican branch of the Mansion when they came up with this idea.

Bad Idea # 1 – Put a mostly nude model on your front cover emulating the mother of Jesus.
Bad Idea # 2 – Do this in a mostly Roman Catholic country that has a major historical habit of revering said mother, especially since she’s actually visited it.
Bad Idea # 3 – Publish it just prior to the holiday that reveres this mother.

I’ve known a lot of Hispanic men over the years, and the three most important women in their lives are the Virgin Mary, their mother, and their wife. Posting provocative pictures of any of those is probably going to get their blood up, paco tiempo.

Someone was either high when they came up with this idea, or they were totally insensitive to the sensibilities of their target audience, or they were out to make a quick buck by creating controversy.

It will be interesting to see if the Church has anything to say about this, and how sales of this edition do in Mexico and the rest of Latin America.

UPDATE:

Looks like Playboy has apologized.

Blackfive points us to a great poem that pretty much sums it up.

Give it a read and much love.

Well, looks like Chrysler and GM will have to find some other way to keep the wheels on until people start buying their products again.

Kind of ironic that the UAW would rather see the jobs of their members put at risk of total obliteration than to take a pay cut for the time being.

Wonder if they’ll get as good an offer if 2 out of 3 American car companies have to either lay off almost everyone or go into bankruptcy and force renegotiation of union contracts?

Glad to see that Ford seems to think it can get through this with no government help. Hopefully the other two will also be able to do it.

Had a bit of an emergency this morning, but thank the Lord it was only excitement, not injury.

Irish Woman has today off from work, so she decided to take some pictures of Baby Bear. He has learned to pull himself up on things, and she was snapping a few pictures of him holding onto Little Bear’s desk chair in our living room.

Baby Bear noticed his teddy bear on the floor next to the chair, let go of the chair and fell backwards.

He landed on his butt, then flopped back further and knocked his head on the edge of the fireplace hearth.

Apparently much crying and screaming commenced.

I got the tearful phone call here at work, and we were off to the emergency room.

I got there to find Baby Bear with a lump and some scratches on the back of his head. But he felt well enough to smile and flirt with the nurse who was looking at him, so I knew he was OK. Irish Woman, on the other hand, took a lot of hugging and talking to calm down.

Baby Bear is fine. Just the first goose egg of many. Irish Woman has calmed down and is going to spend the rest of the day cuddling Baby Bear.

My mother was on a first name basis with the nurses at our local ER when we were growing up, and one of the nurses recognized us from when we were there with Junior Bear last year. Seems that making frequent use of emergency medicine is a family tradition.

Hat tip to Random Nuclear Strikes:

Yes, I know the pic doesn’t look good, but use the link to see it all.

I’ve been paying attention to the auto industry bailout debate. Like I said, I’m of two minds. But the manner in which the executives of the companies, the UAW leadership, and the congresstrolls who support them seems to be “If you don’t give us a ton of money, everyone in America will suffer”.

Don’t come to me with your hat in hand, and tell me that if I don’t make your payroll for you my life will be ruined. It’s just not a good way to approach me.

My work laptop recently bit the big one. I didn’t cry too much because it was getting kind of long in the tooth, and I was thinking of asking for an upgrade anyway.

Luckily, the technicians were able to get my email and documents off of the system, and the Linux virtual machine that I use to develop and support was recovered. Unfortunately, they only were able to recover a snapshot that’s about a month old.

A month ago I was thinking about working on a script to do something kind of hard. It took me until last week to get it working to the point that I was satisfied with it.

Did I mention that my VM’s backup was a month old?

So, I have my VM, but not the script that I worked for over 3 weeks on. I realized this the other day, and after half an hour of looking at every server I support trying to find a copy of the script, I had nothing but some scribbled notes to fall back on.

Some things will just make a grown man cry.

I started work on re-doing the script. Luckily, I was able to remember at least most of what I did, so it looked like it would only take a week or so to recreate my work.

Last night I was looking for a report on my thumb drive, and stumbled across an old copy of the script. It wasn’t debugged at all, but the base functionality was laid down. I know where my bugs are, so I should be able to get it working in a couple of hours.

Back your stuff up people. Get a drive and copy to it. Then safeguard that drive.

OK, this is the more later.

I’m not a Christmas person.

Haven’t been in my entire adult life.

I identify with the Grinch, even if he did wimp out there at the end.

I do all the religious things about Christmas, and I make sure I give a bit more to charity this time of year. I try to be pleasant to my friends and coworkers a bit more. And I of course indulge my children and wife a bit with treats and presents.

But I try to do all of those things throughout the year, even if I fail at it regularly.

I don’t buy the artificial cheerfulness that infects everyone during these times. I certainly don’t buy the “Peace on Earth, goodwill to men” bit while I’m watching the Lord of the Flies shopping experience on the evening news, or the latest “Kill them in the name of God / The children are all dieing because someone higher in society cut off the food” coverage from some third world craphole.

I’ve seen a lot of how badly people can treat each other, both here and abroad. I’ve heard the catch phrase “Make every day Christmas”. But it’s just a slogan, a marketing gimmick. Until people can act like they care that someone other then themselves lives or dies, I don’t buy the Christmas Spirit thing.

When we have food and clothes drives for the poor in June, and they’re well taken care of, don’t wish me a Merry Christmas.

Until parents stop beating their kids and each other during the rest of the year, don’t tell me how nice it is that Mom and Dad don’t fight over the holidays.

Until you understand that your kids need time with you doing something meaningful all year long, don’t tell me how great it is that you were able to score the latest electronic babysitter for them by pushing a grandmother and her walker out of the way at WallyWorld.

No, I’m not the best human being in the world, and I’m as guilty as the next guy when it comes to not loving my fellow man as I would like to be loved myself. But I at least recognize how hypocritical it is to mark off a few weeks during the winter where we have to at least act like we care about the rest of humanity.

So, to all of you out there, have a Merry Christmas. And while you’re at it, I wish you a good time throughout the rest of the year. I’ll try to do my part to help you along with that one.

Og over at Neanderpundit shares my view of Christmas: Warning! Strong Language Ahead!

Merry Christmas to every last one of you politically correct, worthless
XXXXX out there who have nothing better to do other than to waste
perfectly good oxygen and bitch about phrases like, ‘Merry Christmas, God Loves
you, and Napalm Sticks to Kids.’

More on this later.

Roberta X has a good post on dealing with chronic pain.

I’ve been creaky in one form or another since I was 19. When I was young, it was normally muscle soreness from physical exercise, leavened well with the occasional minor injury. I was never one of those “good hurt” types, and I’ve never had a runner’s high. Unless you count the feeling after a run that I might puke and then pass out. If that’s a runner’s high, you can keep it. I’d pop a few ibuprofen, stretch a bit, and get on with it.

When I got to be 26 or so, the pain started moving into my joints. Mostly my knees, but also my ankles, feet, and hands. Like an idiot, I just ignored it, changed over to naproxen, and got on with my life. Should have gone to the doctor, especially considering my families history with arthritis, but had to be a big man and show that I could take care of myself.

By the time I was 32, I was walking with a distinct limp sometimes. I was using Aleve every morning and every night. The Irish Woman and I had been together for a couple of years, and her mantra had become “Go to the doctor, go to the doctor….”. I finally went, with her in tow to make sure I actually kept the appointment.

And guess what? I had arthritis, and it was treatable. Doc put me on some anti-inflamatories, and I started doing better. I’ve been on about 6 different medications over the years, some pretty basic, and some kind of exotic. When the Irish Woman and I were trying to make Baby Bear, I came off all of it for about 2 years, and thankfully we were able to conceive before I had to go back on my meds.

Luckily, I’ve stayed away from the hardcore pain killers. Aleve isn’t cutting it anymore, but the Doc has me on something a bit more potent, but still not a narcotic.

My mother died from complications of Lupus after 20 years of high doses of prednisone and narcotics. It got to the point that she could pretty much get Demerol and Fenigren on demand at the local hospital. By the time I was an adult and had my first child, she was pretty much an addict and spend 3 days out of 5 in a fog.

I’m not going down like that. I may limp, I may need a cane when I’m older, but I’ll get old with a glint in my eye and all of my mental faculties.

Nowadays, I’m sore in a few areas all the time, but the treatments and medicine keep the edge off and keep me from growing fangs and claws during the course of my day.

Roberta X is spot on when she says that the pain becomes part of the background. If I concentrate on how cruddy I feel on bad days, nothing gets done. So I take my medicine, ignore it as much as I can, and know what my limitations are. If I spend a day lifting 200 pound servers with one of my guys, I know I’m not going to be in good shape the next day. So I make sure I have 2 or more guys to help move servers.

So, I get on with it, and remember that there are a lot of people who are worse off.